Tuesday, May 03, 2011

It's not the NDP's fault that the Liberals finally alienated progressives completely by repeatedly campaigning from the left and governing from the right. It's not the NDP's fault that the Liberal Party finally alienated Quebecors completely by treating being in power as one big open milk bar where their friends, family and friendly advertising agencies could skim off all the cream. It's not the NDP's fault that the Liberals managed to alienate everybody else by picking an arrogant, George W Bush supporting neoconservative leader who openly sneered at anyone who disagreed with him about staying in Afghanistan and was responsible for pulling the Liberals out of a coalition arrangement we could still have been in today

It's not the NDP's fault that the Liberal Party has always opposed any move away from First Past the Post and towards Proportional Representation. I predict now that they've been on the receiving end of the downside of First Past the Post they are about to become born again Proportional Representation supporters.

It's not the NDP's fault that so many of the Liberal Party's supporters had no ideology greater than power and when the chips were down voted Conservative in huge numbers rather than support the NDP.

As someone else put it much more succinctly: It's not the NDP's fault that the Liberal Party sucks so much.

Many Liberals are approaching these results with class and dignity, others with frothing, hateful meltdowns. In the coming months and years the Liberal and New Democratic Parties are going to have a lot to talk about.

It will not be on the basis that the NDP should apologize for winning the support it did this election.

2 comments:

Both Libs and NDP need to ask themselves why so many people chose to vote Conservative and not Liberal, NDP, or Green. Diving down the rabbit hole, pointing fingers at each other, is not going to help win votes.

If one must point fingers at someone, pick the national right wing media for failing to pursue the damaging Conservative record and not reporting on alternatives.

Working hard or hardly working? The sun is shining, my coffee is hot and a lazy sunday lies ahead of me And last night Rob Anders slun...

Cliff

My Political Compass reads -7.00 / -5.74 which means essentially a lefty libertarian. I've been a union activist and delegate, worked as a lobbyist in Ottawa and ran for office provincially in Alberta for the NDP. I've also worked as a journalist and editor and had fiction published.